Berkley Earth Project - urgent rebuttal needed from resident climate science experts

[pjclarke]

Indeed, historically, changes in solar activity have been the largest, if slow-acting natural climate forcing . Also there is a multi-million Euro project going on at CERN into the possible cosmic-ray/cloud linkage, which kinda falsifies the assertion that only 'pro-AGW' scientists (whatever they might be) can get funding.

The problem with the 'It's the sun!' alternative explanations is that over the recent warming period, all the metrics of solar activity, including cosmic ray flux, have flatlined or gone the opposite way to that required for a solar-driven warming. Cosmic rays have flatlined (once the regular solar cycle is subtracted) since they started being directly observed in the fifties. Meanwhile the planet is over half a degree warmer.

[BlasterBates]

The sun has been going through a phase known as the solar maximum:



So if the sun does have an affect on the climate, one would expect higher than average temperatures during this maximum, i.e. the last few decades.

There's a new paper that demonstrates a link between solar activity and temperature.

http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.co...scafetta-2011/

A key conclusion:

In particular, a quasi-60-year large cycle is quite evident since 1650 in all climate and astronomical records herein studied, which also include a historical record of meteorite fall in China from 619 to 1943. These findings support the thesis that climate oscillations have an astronomical origin.